Daisies under cabbage
by capitol grasshopper
Summary: Everybody knows babies grow under cabbage leaves. Melinda May always tells Daisy she was buying vegetables one day and that's how she found her: under cabbage. Or: where four year old Daisy is Melinda May's human credential and Phil Coulson has his hands full.
1. Daisy

**I**

"Mom!"

She's buying cabbage at the local farmer's market when she feels tiny hands crawl up her thigh.

She stills, wallet in one hand and chosen head in the other, looking down in surprise into wide dreamy eyes peeking behind a thick fringe and a little girl clinging to her leg.

"Mom!" the girl squeals again, stretching her chubby arms at her to be picked up.

Melinda May has never seen this child in her life.

But the lady behind the counter doesn't know and promptly frees her hands, bagging the vegetable for her, assuming no toddler would ever misidentify their mother.

Melinda thins her lips.

Because objecting would grab attention she doesn't need, she lifts the little monkey up in her arms, then pays one handed and retrieves her purchases before taking a few steps farther out of the way of other customers and into a less busy spot.

"You lost mommy?" she asks flatly, rearranging the girl and the shopping bags to a more comfortable position. She scans the street for any telling sign of commotion or undeniable biological relationship (detecting none).

"No, I _finded_ you!" replies the little girl shaking her head with dark twinkly eyes, delighted.

Providentially, behind them in the crowd of market goers, Melinda hears someone frantically calling.

* * *

 **Interlude I**

Daisy has never seen anyone more flawless _in the whole world_ (which, for her, admittedly consists of little more than the small town in Montana she lived all four years of her short life).

She has dark hair and black clothes (and eats vegetables, which is… _tough_! They're _yucky_!), but most importantly, for Daisy, she looks _just_ right. "Mom!"

She stares up at the unperturbed beautiful lady, transfixed, like she's seeing a fairy (a _real_ fairy!) for the first time, and when she's finally able to touch her silky hair and smooth skin she doesn't want to let go. Ever!

* * *

 **II**

"No!"

Melinda's lips thin again as her hair is caught in one of Daisy's fists, but she gracefully doesn't flinch. She just stares back at the man yanking on Daisy's arm to coerce the little girl into letting go of her neck. This is the most physical contact she had in months and she's not sure she's missed it.

"I am so sorry," the man repeats for the third time, looking appropriately contrite. "Daisy, please-"

He's successfully extricated Daisy's legs from around her waist, but the girl is still desperately clawing at her shoulder and crying at the top of her lungs (into her ear), determined to cling to her with a force neither of them suspected such a small creature would be capable of.

Melinda May never had much patience, even less for something as futile and energy wasting as tantrums, mostly because they bring about the attention of passersby and by now she's feeling all of the market goers' eyes on them. It must be a rather comical picture, she muses, from the outside… But neither of them is laughing.

Daisy's father is trying to pry open the girl's fist in her hair, at first with tickles, then (when it mysteriously fails) with alluring promises.

But Daisy is having none of it: she's burying her wet cheeks in the hollow of her neck (which is starting to get slightly uncomfortable), not listening to a word he's saying, and she's kicking his guts instead.

At the second accidental punch to her jaw, Melinda finally has had enough: she sighs and squares her shoulders, almost succeeding in looking collected (if it weren't for the screaming baby hanging from her neck), drops her bags and gathers Daisy fully back in her arms.

"It's ok," she says then, after a pause, to the man looking at her quizzically. "I'll walk you home," she adds addressing the weeping four year old "if you stop crying."

It only takes that for Daisy to calm down.

* * *

"You're the first woman of Asian descent she's ever seen," he explains later, as she carries his baby and he carries her groceries.

He has a soft, gentle voice that quietly suits his unintelligible half smile.

She hums noncommittally but she thinks she understands because she's moved up there over a month ago and she's met very little diversity so far.

They walk leisurely, almost afraid to pick up a pace, Daisy peacefully nestled in her side, dozing off in the late afternoon sun after the waterworks exertion. Melinda May looks down at the tiny hand fisting the collar of her shirt, their matching skin tone, the pouty curve of her baby lips, the shape of her eyes, and sees what the girl must have seen: her missing half. Something that looking into the clear blue eyes of the soft spoken man beside her the child couldn't find.

"I worried I wouldn't be able to give her a background inclusive of the culture she belongs to as she grows up," he says "I didn't think she'd already be so self conscious."

Phil Coulson is a police officer. He'd discovered Daisy one winter morning almost four years earlier, wrapped in a flower patterned blanket in a cardboard box outside his station. "We've never found who her parents were," he adds.

And that is all Melinda May learns that first day about Daisy since it's not a long walk to their red door cottage uphill from then. She brushes off Coulson's apologies once again when, upon exchanging burdens (sleepy baby for groceries), her shirt is left all rumpled with creases and wet tear patches.

"Say goodbye to-"

"Melinda," she supplies, and he will later confess that he thought the sound suitably melancholic.

* * *

 **Interlude II**

In her half-asleep state Daisy hears her father's voice and obeys dutifully: "Bye Mom," she says. Then curls herself up against him and clings to his shirt.

Later, in her bed, long after her father has kissed her goodnight, Daisy wakes up in the dark, just for a moment, and looking up at the faint light of the night sky Phil meticulously recreated with fluorescent sticker stars, she remembers the smooth texture and the smell of _her mother_ 's skin, warm like earth, sweet like flowers (lily of the valley, she'll learn, but Daisy cannot name it yet), and smiles peacefully.

* * *

 **III**

Daisy doesn't meet her again for several weeks.

Then:

* * *

Melinda May never had a child. She is not used to respond to the name _Mom_. That's why she doesn't look up from the book she's reading one sunny Sunday afternoon sitting on the grass in the park, even after the second cry.

She does, however, lift her eyes on a little girl sprinting towards her when she hears her father's _Daisy, wait up!_

Melinda is on her feet in seconds, because Daisy is about to happily scamper across the cycling path winding through the park, adoring eyes focused only on her.

"Daisy, stop!" shouts her father to no avail, trying to catch up, and only grasping the air on her wake as a teen on a bike skirts her by inches.

Melinda lifts her off the ground just in time to avoid a scooter, swinging on the side and making the little girl shrill with the thrill of _flying_. Daisy lands safely in her arms, giggling, completely oblivious as she staggers a bit backward on the slope of the meadow, plopping down cross legged. And from within her rises something she thought she'd buried long ago: "Stop running away from your father!" she rebukes. It's when the adrenaline rush wears off that she realizes she's raised her voice, and the little girl on her lap is staring back at her with terrified wide eyes, her chin starting to wobble.

Phil Coulson reaches them just in time to drop on the side the small red tricycle he's been carrying all along and settle gracelessly beside her to catch Daisy flinging herself in his arms, wailing.

* * *

They exchange guilty looks over the disheveled head of a crying Daisy. Phil Coulson mouths a _thank you_ to Melinda May and she answers pursing her lips slightly at the mess she's created. "You might consider a leash," she suggests, and even manages to get a chuckle out of him.

She listens to Phil Coulson explaining to his daughter, with gentler words and a more soothing voice, why _Miss May_ was right and why she got upset. She waits, focuses on a single point and lets the rest (the park, the people, the street outside the fence) become white noise. Her heartbeat eventually slows down but the discomfort doesn't fade. Melinda May can handle dangerous adults, it's her job, but dealing with intrepid children is new, and _disquieting_ because after a few more tears and a snotty nose Daisy is back to staring at her with her big curious chocolate eyes like she's some kind of wonder.

So, to deflect an attention she's not used to, in the panic of the aftermath she offers ice cream, legitimizing Daisy's worship (a mistake she'll never fully regret).

They sit in the meadow after that, waving at the little girl going back and forth in front of them on her tricycle for the rest of the afternoon, and she learns that Phil is a history buff, that he loves restoring vintage cars in his spare time and reading old spy stories, that Daisy only finishes her vegetables if he reminds her that _Miss May_ does too, and that he's finding it difficult to satisfy her insistent requests for black children clothes.

But Melinda May knows she never told him her family name, so after a few ordinary questions she easily dances around, she has to sigh: "You ran a background check on me already, didn't you?" And she can almost read the word _busted_ on his face "Anything interesting?"

"You got the attention of my baby girl, forgive me, I… needed to know more."

"Asking is too old fashioned even for you?" She thinks she sees a faint color creeping up his neck at that. Endearing.

"You don't seem very chatty."

Understating. "Touché."

"You moved from Arizona, why up here?"

"Change of scenery."

"What did you do back there?"

"I was a trainer. Self defense classes for women, martial arts… Very cliché."

He snorts good-naturedly. "Plans from now?"

"None."

Phil Coulson is graceful enough to avoid any talk of her husband.

* * *

 **Interlude III**

Jemma Simmons is _wrong_.

Jemma is usually right because she is the smartest of the class, but Daisy is ready to fight to prove that _this time_ Jemma is wrong. For instance, her list of characteristics a fairy, or a princess or a mother must share (like blonde hair and wearing pink or baby blue) is easily debunkable (even Leopold Fitz had to agree, his mother is a brunette), therefore confirming that her hero dressed in black _can_ indeed be a fairy.

But on one common particular Daisy cannot find a way to advocate her point: Melinda May doesn't smile.

* * *

 **IV**

Melinda May used to be different. She was always quiet, but warm, fearless in a different way, getting in trouble, pulling pranks... She thought rules were meant to be broken. So when her family started to press her about marriage at twenty two she moved to the Hunan province to continue her practice of tai chi, alone. And when at thirty one she met a handsome psychology professor at Culver University on vacation in Maui, with a charming smile and the right head for a banter, she eloped with him within three months.

For three years Melinda May and Andrew Garner thought they had all the time in the world. Then they finally convinced themselves it was the right moment for bibs and middle of the night wake up calls.

But their baby never came (and eventually they stopped trying).

"I don't mind," she tells Phil Coulson when he apologizes again for Daisy.

"I try to correct her, but-" he says the third Sunday they meet at the park.

"It's ok," she repeats, "I don't have anyone else calling me _Mom_."

"Yes but…" He accidentally brushes against her arm and she flinches and he notices. "I'm seeing someone," he finally admits "And it seems to be going somewhere so… I was waiting for the right moment to introduce them..."

"I understand."

"I just don't want to confuse Daisy."

"Of course."

And it's better, anyway. Melinda May never dares dreaming anymore. And if she feels a shred of disappointment she quietly repress it, anyway.

* * *

The next time she sees Daisy, the little girl is pretending to have a tea party with cupcakes made of sand with her father and another woman, a brunette with a neat bob haircut, a string of pearls around her neck and striking green eyes.

Melinda is just jogging along the street on a Saturday, thinking of going through the park when she sees them sitting on a red blanket in the meadow by the sandbox, the other woman nodding at Daisy's chattering and sharing a smirk with Phil.

Melinda turns right instead and goes up the street, undetected.

* * *

On Tuesday Daisy and Phil Coulson are at her door.

The little girl has the blotchy face and the untidy ponytail of someone who's been screaming herself hoarse. Her father doesn't seem to have been sleeping much the night before either.

"I'm so sorry, I was hoping you wouldn't be home," he says. Melinda has to tilt her head at the unusual bitterness she catches in his voice. "But feel free to yell at us and kick us off your porch, _please_."

Phil Coulson definitely had a rough night, but Melinda May is not going to make things easier for him by playing the wicked witch in front of Daisy as he's begging for. (She tried, the whole _I'm not your mom_ speech flew right above her head).

Instead she thins her lips and accepts the little girl's offer of a drawing. It's a _family portrait_ assignment at kindergarten, Daisy explains: there is a circle with spiky _hair_ and a big blue dot of a hat on the left (which must be Agent Coulson), a smaller circle floating in the middle showing a single feature (a big curvy red line as a smile, perhaps, it's Daisy), and another circle surrounded by black scribbles on the other side of a patched up paper tear. The sheet's been crumpled and torn in places, but someone (and Melinda is not going off on a limb to guess it was Phil) restored it and taped it back together.

As he'll admit later, there was a big crisis the day before after he went to pick up Daisy at kindergarten. He'd assumed the drawing was of Rosalind (the _other woman_ ) and told her about it, he didn't know _Roz_ was going to bring it up at dinner, praising Daisy for her talent, upsetting the little girl so much she tore the drawing in half. (He has certainly made it worse by insisting it _could_ somehow look like Rosalind…) And there they are, late for school, sitting in her kitchen like lost puppies with a glass of apple juice each.

Melinda May studies the drawing deadly serious, making the girl holding her breath and fussing with the hem of her shirt. With the corner of her eye she can see Phil Coulson's amused (and tired) look and she thinks it's too late to pull back now, anyway: she's in, she's in too deep already. The whole _no feelings, nothing to lose_ resolution she's imposed herself definitely crumbling.

"Beautiful," she reassures Daisy.

* * *

Daisy is sampling peas, one by one, picking them up with her hands and testing their consistency between fingers or teeth, essentially making a mess.

But her father is too nervous to pay much attention (and that's why she's there anyway), he's trying on different ties and none seems to be the right one.

"Daisy, what do you think?" he enquires from the hall raising up in turns a striped blue tie and a burgundy one with a green checker motive through the kitchen doorframe.

Melinda mouths _blue_ from her corner in the kitchen where she's sorting dishes in the dishwasher and Daisy complies enthusiastically yelling her feedback. She has to admit it's quite adorable how he keeps the four year old involved in most aspects of his life so easily.

"Ok, emergency numbers are on the fridge, I left you the keys, yes?" he reminds them both as he puts his jacket on. Melinda lifts the bundle from the table in answer. "If she lies about her bedtime routine..." he warns with a pointed look at his giggling child on the high chair at the kitchen island.

"I'll handle it," she reassures him.

"And if she doesn't want to brush her teeth before bed-"

"I'll handle it," she repeats raising her chin. (In truth, it's the first time she _handles_ a child on her own. But it's Daisy and she's already brainlessly addicted to her cheerful laugh.)

Phil grunts, amused. Then circles around the island for a goodbye kiss Daisy grants all too willingly, smothering his cheeks with wet noisy sounds. He reemerges with a pea green stain on his pristine white shirt collar and to his dismay and Daisy's highest amusement he has to change again.

Melinda is almost certain the little sprout did it on purpose to make him stay home a little longer. She'd high five her if she knew for sure (instead she patiently watches her attempts at collecting running peas in her plastic panda plate, thinking there is a lot of work to do to reshape those awful table manners).

Phil Coulson is back in his kitchen a few minutes later with a clean shirt, checking his pockets for the theater tickets and his own keys in a cloud of _Man In Black_ cologne that has her tingle at the base of her spine. "How do I look?" he asks distractedly reading the wall clock and fretting over his tie.

"Dashing!" offers Daisy, the last peas on her fork flying around.

Melinda steps in front of him to catch his attention (thinking he looked even better with no tie, no jacket and the rolled up sleeves of that V neck shirt he had on when she arrived earlier): "May I?" She undoes his crooked tie knot and ties it again as he nervously blabber on about not having had a dinner out date in four years, and she mistakenly looks up at him grinning at her like a puppy when she's done.

 _Thanks_ , he says, and she has to find something to do with her hands then (to ignore the pull in her guts), she smoothes the lapels of his light grey suit, pursing her lips at the doorbell.

She doesn't know what Phil told her, but Rosalind Price, his _date_ , doesn't seem surprised to see Melinda there at all: "Nice to meet you," she chirps, "you must be Daisy's mother."

"No," she answers at the same time Coulson says: "Yes." And it's a little awkward for the three of them to explain then.

Rosalind Price stays for barely five minutes, and that's all Melinda May needs to see she's poised, elegant in her simple tailored deep blue dress, with a genuine smile that makes her eyes crinkle in an endearing way when she teases Phil Coulson. Their banter is easy and witty and _oblivious_ and Rosalind Price moves around him with the confidence of someone knowing the feeling of his body against hers. _She_ doesn't _flinch_.

 _Bye bye angel eyes,_ says Phil to his daughter before leaving on the other woman's vintage Ford Thunderbird.

Daisy stares at the door after it closes, sucking a pea with a hand at her temple as if lost in thought (so cute in her adult mimic her heart clenches), till Melinda sighs, slamming the dishtowel on the kitchen counter: "You'll like her," she promises. Daisy just pushes the pea out with her tongue and on the plastic panda plate. "In time," Melinda acknowledges.

* * *

 **Interlude IV**

Rosalind Price is quite nice.

That is not to say Daisy _likes_ her, no… But at least she doesn't _dislike_ her. Not when she's laughing and making faces and doing the different voices while reading her stories (that one time it happened).

Most of all Daisy likes how proudly Phil Coulson looks at her when she wisely plays along, smiling back, chatting, drawing for her (after the incident with the _family portrait_ )... Ever since _Roz_ tags along her father seems happier. Daisy likes _that_.

Yes, Rosalind Price is quite nice, Daisy thinks, it's just that she is not Melinda May.

* * *

 **V**

 _What could possibly go wrong._

She did ask herself that before accepting the change in plans after the drawing disaster (and ignored all possible answer) she just knew she was setting herself up for heartbreak.

And headaches.

By the fourth time they watch _Frozen_ Melinda May knows every single line and every single tune and hates them with a passion she _must conceal_ (oh, the irony!) for Daisy.

Babysitting is harder than anyone makes it sound.

Not that Daisy is a particularly difficult child, apart from her table manners, she is well behaved, has a good imagination, chatters a lot even without active interaction, and mostly does what Melinda tells her to do ( _Give me your hand before crossing the street, Don't run ahead, Keep the volume down, Wash your hands before dinner..._ ), all in all they get along just fine.

The hardest part of babysitting, for Melinda May, is once her little girl is tucked in bed and she's left alone waiting for Phil Coulson in his house.

She tries watching tv but either there's never anything interesting on or she can't relax enough in that space that screams _Phil Coulson_ to pay attention. (The warm colors, the capitonné brown leather couch, dark wood furniture and brick fireplace, the mantelpiece crowded with pictures of Daisy). She usually ends up wandering in front of his library in the studio and leaf through a book on Norse mythology or medieval poems till she hears his car engine dying on the driveway. This time eleven minutes before one in the morning.

"I'm so sorry," he says, but he looks too smug to feel any remorse at all. "We lost track of time."

"Not a problem."

"Is Daisy-"

"Sleeping," she confirms. They had a quiet evening, she lists as usual, dinner at six, Daisy tried using chopsticks for the first time (it was a failure, but she liked her chop suey), watched _Frozen_ again while she cleaned up the kitchen, then they tried a jigsaw puzzle before bed.

Phil Coulson is only half listening and there's that faint redness creeping up his neck again.

She's been staring at his lips tonight (more than usual). And he's picked up on it. So this time, before leaving, Melinda cups his cheek and runs her thumb on the corner of his mouth, watches amused as his eyes widen in surprise and the blush reaches the tip of his ears, then heads out, rubbing her thumb and index finger together to get rid of the _other woman_ 's smudged lipstick she wiped from his face.

* * *

It's a double edged sword, really…

The town is too small and people talk. They talk about Phil Coulson and his dedication to his job, they talk about his big heart and warm smile, and the light in his eyes when he speaks of his adopted baby girl. They talk about his Officer partner Maria Hill and how level headed and skilled she is, they talk about that time she dodged a bullet and disarmed a thug trying to rob old Talbott's gas station. People gossip about his previous partner, John Garrett (before Phil started training young Maria), and how his turbulent affair with coworker Victoria Hand ended both their marriages. And people now gossip about Phil's new girlfriend, the brunette from Helena with the expensive vintage car, and the outsider Asian woman he chose to watch his toddler while he's out living it up.

They don't know he didn't choose a damn thing and that Melinda May is a very selfish broken shell (and that Daisy has them both wrapped around her adorable, tiny, little finger).

But people have to find entertainment where they can, because the town is small.

So small that a grey sedan with an Arizona number plate making the rounds outside the park doesn't go unnoticed when Melinda May walks out with Daisy one Tuesday morning.

It's still there when she leaves the little girl in kindergarten, and is parked outside while she shops for groceries.

Melinda May stopped caring about anything a while ago (she could pinpoint the exact time and date her will faded, if she wanted to remember), and the barrel of a gun to her head in an empty alley doesn't feel like something she should be scared of.

 _Get in the car_ , the taller of the two men with the guns orders.

And thus she's gone. And people had a lot to say about it but, as usual, nothing really helpful.


	2. Melinda

For five days Phil Coulson tries to make sense of it, for five nights he has to look Daisy in the eyes and lie. _She had to go away for awhile_.

Her phone rings for thirteen hours, then the battery dies and it's straight to voicemail. Maria Hill tracks it down to the side of a road outside Pocatello, Idaho, but no one remembers a tiny Asian woman on a grey sedan from Arizona. No one, in Arizona, has seen Melinda May since she moved out six months ago.

Phil Coulson cannot make sense of it. The quiet, reserved, insightful woman he trusts with his daughter disappeared. Abducted, they think. But after five days of no clues it feels more like _vanished_. And he cannot make sense of it, or of the panic keeping him up all night.

They try to find the car but it doesn't appear on any security camera footage in town after that first morning, nor in any gas station between there and Pocatello, Idaho.

They dig into her backstory and nothing stands out, no alarm rings, and none of her old acquaintances knows anything.

 _She changed after her husband died_.

 _She was always quiet_.

 _They were a happy couple. No kids, just… them_.

 _Everybody loved Melinda, of course. Andrew, her husband, poor soul… he adored her_.

 _He was a shrink_.

 _She was always an early bird, up at sunrise for her tai chi, but after the car crash she wouldn't even get out of bed. For awhile_.

 _No, we haven't heard from her in months_.

 _Mr Garner? Andrew's tomb is in town, yes. No, she hasn't visited since_.

 _It was an accident. She was driving_.

Maria Hill sighs and slams the report shut on her desk. "It seems to me the only person really hating Melinda May, is your precious Melinda May," she concludes.

At his own desk opposite hers, Phil Coulson keeps silent.

* * *

He's sure Daisy can feel his distress, even if he tries to act like everything is normal when he's around her. But she's been having nightmares the past couple of nights and Phil is quite certain it's all about Melinda May.

" _Are you sure she hasn't run away with a younger handsome guy, maybe?_ " suggests Rosalind Price.

Phil snorts in the phone, almost indignant: "She has no boyfriend. And no. I mean yes, I'm sure," he corrects himself.

" _Phil._ "

"I'm sure," he protests. He doesn't tell her it's more of a _hope_ than a certainty, because he doesn't really know much about Melinda May (or the current state of her love life) and he regrets it now. Sure she is beautiful… she probably had plenty of suitors, but… He grits his teeth. "She wouldn't leave without warning, she wouldn't leave Daisy..." He stops himself before his voice raises further, his blood pressure already skyrocketing.

He's making it personal, like disappearing before he has the decency to get curious about his daughter's nanny is a terrible rudeness _on her part_. He remembers the feeling of _confusion_ the day they called him from kindergarten to pick up Daisy because Melinda hadn't showed up like she'd done the past six weeks. Bemusement at first, bewilderment, and worry at last. She was reserved, he's assumed, withdrawn, she valued her personal space, she wasn't nosy, she was good with Daisy, and he's forgotten to look beyond the cool detachment and the silence because it was convenient. Because he was distracted.

"I'm sorry we have to cancel the reservation."

" _It's ok, I understand,_ " Rosalind says in a soft voice " _Just, Phil, please… try not to stress over this more than you already are, you need some rest, look at the matter with a fresh mind in the morning._ "

Sleep… He needs to find Melinda May first. "Yeah."

The grey sedan, her abandoned phone, her house as it was, her bank account untouched… If she voluntarily disappeared why stage it like an abduction? It doesn't add up.

He can't really sleep, for days, he keeps going over every mundane detail, information, fact or impression they were able to collect, mixing them with his own personal experience of her. Which, it turns out, is quite limited. (He only has himself to blame). The truth is only one person was really paying attention to Melinda May beyond pleasantries these days.

"Has she ever told you she wanted to go away? Or was she ever worried she had to leave at some point?" Doctor Weaver asks in a gentle voice observing Daisy as she builds a lego miniature house.

It's hard to make an interrogation as casual as possible, but he's not going to traumatize his daughter, so he set up his phone to record the conversation in his living room instead of the police station. The Special Agent they sent from the FBI had no complaints about it as long as he was allowed to listen.

"She never said that. But she is always so _sad_."

"Sad?" Phil prompts.

"She never smiles."

"Have you ever met any of her friends?"

Daisy ponders the question for a few seconds, then answers: "No. Is she sad cause she has no friends? Dad can be her friend! Right, Dad? You can be her friend!"

Phil has to chuckle, reassuring his overly eager daughter.

"Has she ever told you about other… people? Bad people?" Doctor Weaver clarifies.

"No. Is she in trouble?"

"Of course not."

Daisy goes back to assembling her lego village, but from his spot on the sofa beside her Phil can see the little cogs spinning in her head. "Mom says I can move mountains if I want," Daisy reveals at last, "I will move mountains if _bad people_ hurt her."

Doctor Weaver smiles softly at his little girl's brave statement and his heart aches.

Phil Coulson's mission (now more than ever) is to find Melinda May. And Phil Coulson's greatest fear at the moment is to only find Melinda May's body.

"Have you ever seen her fight with someone? On the phone maybe?"

"Only bricks."

"Bricks?" It's not the answer Doctor Weaver was expecting, clearly, she throws him a look of confusion and he shrugs. All he knows is she was a self defence trainer and did tai chi back in Arizona, but when and where Daisy could have witnessed Melinda May breaking bricks is anyone guess. (And that's concerning, regardless).

"Yeah, like rocks, mountains," Daisy explains casually, her attention clearly on the more important task of finding the right block for the little house chimney. "She can cut mountains in half," she adds nodding "If she wants. She's gonna teach me, too, one day."

Melinda May is a soldier, he realizes then. She's not always been one and he's not sure when and why but something hardened in her, coiled around her spine, _made_ her one. He can understand it now, clearly see it in the way she discreetly evaluated ways out of new spaces, silently observed details, tensed at accidental touches, her instinct kicking in because, for her, contact is always violent. Until Daisy found her and spun her world on its axis.

Phil Coulson at least is sure of one thing: Melinda May wouldn't go down without a fight.

* * *

The fifth day a black Harley Davidson stops in front of Daisy's school seven minutes before class is over.

Phil Coulson is leaning on his car across the street, waiting for his child, and almost gets run over as he scrambles to get to the tiny figure dressed in black getting off that bike. "May!"

Melinda May turns to face him and in the few seconds that he needs to reach her he can see her go from startled to tensed to _crimped_.

"May!" he calls again stopping himself a few inches from just grabbing her by the shoulders. "What happened to you?"

She is wearing make up, a little more than usual to cover the shadow of a nasty bruise on her left jaw and a few scratches, but it can't do much for the gash on her forehead just above her left eye, and who knows what she's hiding under the aviator sunglasses and the black leather jacket and pants. "Nothing," she dismisses him.

"What? Are you ok? Where have you been?" he presses, confused, unable to keep his hands to himself. (He wants to touch her, make sure she is real, safe, alive… But the tension in her neck is a clear warning and his hands just hover awkwardly in the space between them).

Melinda May fists her hands at her sides. "I'm sorry," she whispers "I'm just here to say goodbye."

"What?" Phil mentally slaps himself for sounding like a broken record "No, you- You disappear for five days and come back battered… I _need_ to know what happened."

Other parents are gathering around to retrieve their kids and are (more or less subtly) staring at them. Melinda purses her lips. "You should see the other guy," she deadpans.

"This is not funny."

"I'm sorry, I can't say, Phil- I…" she stammers on his name, like she's not used to say it out loud. "I'm just here to say goodbye," she repeats, and there's a rather sharp edge to it, something resembling her jawline (or a knife in his guts).

Phil Coulson wants nothing more than to stop time, right then and there, to take a breath and take her hand, because he finally _has_ Melinda May, but she is telling him she's going to leave for good. And somehow the thought is unbearable.

"No, you…" he stumbles on words as well till he finds some footing on a bubbling _rage_ : "You're fooling yourself if you think i'm gonna let you anywhere near Daisy untill I know more, and your story better be convincing!"

"Not here," she hisses, tilting her head towards their audience.

"Oh yes, here, now!" he snaps.

Melinda May loses her composure then, she presses her lips together and her hands come up to his chest. But she only brushes at his lapels with her fingertips in what he thinks is a mixture of self defense and plea. "Phil, I-"

"Mom!"

And then he's watching Melinda May's dark silky hair fly over her shoulders as she spins around to Daisy's voice without missing a beat. When just a few months earlier she wouldn't even have raised her eyes at the call now it's one fluid motion to drop to one knee and catch his daughter mid-air.

"Mom! You're back!"

Daisy clutches at her as tight as she can, tiny fingers digging into black leather, legs circling her waist and Phil thinks he sees Melinda May wince just a little. Broken ribs, he deduces. What have you been up to, May?

The other parents find their children and it seems their little altercation is forgotten. (Only a few still hang by the gates, chitchatting, maybe waiting for a resolution he, himself, cannot foresee).

"Does it hurt?" Daisy inspects Melinda May's forehead wound with exaggerated apprehension.

The woman shakes her head, rubbing the tip of her nose against Daisy's cheek in the process, making her giggle, and it feels like another punch to his guts because in months she's been around Daisy he's never witnessed her showing unrestrained affection, it's puzzling, it's _all out_ , it's definitely _once in a lifetime_. She's going to leave. She's going to leave then, he thinks with a pang of regret.

"Nothing a kiss can't cure."

His daughter gently peppers her face with noisy kisses then, giggling and making faces when Melinda sticks out the tip of her tongue and licks her playfully on the nose.

"Better?"

"Much better."

"I made new drawings! Wanna see?"

"Of course."

"They're at home."

Phil Coulson doesn't know what to do with himself. He just stares at the two of them transfixed, knitting his brow, realizing for the first time just how high the stakes are.

* * *

 **Interlude V**

Daisy adores her father. To her, Phil Coulson is the kindest and the strongest man in the world (he can lift her up with just one arm!). Whenever she's moody his soothing voice can always cheer her up, he just takes her in his arms and she is safe. (And he knows all the princesses stories!) Her father's smile could make anyone feel better.

She is ever so puzzled when Melinda May seems to stubbornly resist his spell. She thinks maybe _sadness_ is an illness she doesn't have a cure for, and she's afraid even Phil Coulson could catch it.

* * *

 **VI**

"Why do you look so sad?"

"I'm not _sad_ ," answers Melinda May as neutrally as always.

"But you don't _look_ happy to be back?" counters Daisy.

Phil Coulson should knock on the bedroom doorframe and tell them dinner is ready, but Daisy is sitting on her bed inside the circle of the woman's legs, struggling to put her arm in the pajamas' right sleeve while Melinda braids her still wet hair, and somehow it's a picture he doesn't have the heart to break.

Melinda May is not _sad_ , at least not on the surface. Phil Coulson cannot decide if Daisy simply doesn't have the words to describe her perfectly composed non expression or the little girl is seeing that something that still eludes him.

"It's… My head still hurts a little, that's all."

He watches Daisy turn around and stand up on the bed, arms flying at the woman's shoulders to seek balance. "Aren't my kisses enough? Should we ask Dad to make it better?" He is an over forty male police officer, but Phil Coulson feels his cheeks burn bright at that.

"I'll be alright."

"Does this hurt too?" From that angle Phil cannot see the spot on Melinda's chest his daughter is pointing at, but he imagines, having bathed together, that she's seen other injuries now hidden by the bathrobe, and his blood boils. They _need_ to talk, at length (but not in front of his little girl).

Melinda May shakes her head and Daisy drops back in front of her, sitting on her heels between the woman's legs, tiny fists on her thighs, pouty lips and squinty eyes in conspiratory fashion. "Maybe we can have dessert tonight."

Phil Coulson chuckles then from his spot leaning on the doorframe, regretfully breaking the intimacy. "Maybe," he grants, "But dinner first."

* * *

Putting Daisy to bed is harder than any other night. But in the end Phil Coulson finally gets to have Melinda May sitting on a barstool by the island in his kitchen, alone. The grey Blondie tank top she had underneath the leather jacket is finally revealing a constellation of bruises and patched up cuts and burns on her upper arms, shoulders, and back, disappearing under the fabric on her chest. Without makeup on, he can see the bruise on her jaw too is somewhat fading into a bluish green, which tells him it's at least a few days old. What he still doesn't know is: "Who did this?"

"I didn't ask. I punched back," she delivers without even blinking.

"Ok, _rambo_ ," he scoffs, "now tell me how you disappeared for five days, punched your way back and from where." She sighs. "Now, preferably, before I drag you to the station and listen as you tell everything to the feds."

She snaps her head up at that. "You called the FBI?"

"Of course, I had to, you disappeared! For days… Your phone was found in Idaho, May, I had to."

"I don't trust the FBI."

"I don't give a damn," he replies "Convince me to still trust _you_ with my daughter's care."

Melinda May looks back at him with something akin hurt that has nothing to do with cuts and bruises, and somehow it makes him uncomfortable (in that sort of way public displays of affection do). Her shoulders subtly drop, her lips part slightly. And that's how he knows he won't like her truth any better than her silence.

Not really knowing why he can't look her in the eyes then he gets busy checking her injuries. He realizes soon enough she should see a doctor, but for now his first aid kit will have to do.

She lets him fuss about her, maybe sensing that he needs something more tangible than words to root him. It seems to suit her too, because when she eventually starts talking about Eva Belyakov and her daughter Katya she feels million miles away.

She tells him Eva came to her classes needing to get stronger to protect herself from a violent boyfriend. Gritting her teeth against the sting of rubbing alcohol and her own memories, she tells him how she trained her, and how three months later she still ended up at her door, battered and bruised, with her little girl and one bag. So she did what she felt was right and helped them disappear. What she didn't know at the time was that Eva's boyfriend was Anton Ivanov, reclusive industrialist with interests all over the globe (and a small dedicated personal army he called his _Watchdogs_ at his disposal, like any respectable _Bratva_ leader).

"So he kidnapped you to know where Eva is hiding," Phil guesses, carefully dabbing at the gash on her forehead with a glue soaked swab and internally mapping a way to get the man behind bars.

"No," Melinda May hisses "Eva was found dead with her little girl in an FBI safehouse two weeks later." Phil pauses, searching her eyes, but Melinda is fixing some point in front of her seeing nothing but her own guilt. "A month after that Andrew was gone, too."

He takes a second to collect himself and the growing impression he's dealing with something bigger than even the FBI agent they sent can handle.

"Not an accident."

"No. Another car hitting our car till it sent us crashing off road," she confirms flatly. "I should have died that night."

"May-"

"I waited, for months, for them to come and finish the job. But it never happened." _After the car crash she wouldn't even get out of bed. For awhile_ , he remembers. "So I put as many miles as possible between me and everyone I still cared about. I didn't know anyone here, I didn't want to put anyone at risk again, I- I never meant to... get attached... to anyone," she admits softly.

"Till Daisy roped you in," he quietly adds.

Her eyes well up then, but her voice never falters: "That was stupidly selfish of me."

"You're too hard on yourself, you know that?"

Melinda May thins her lips and he holds his breath.

"They had footage of Daisy," she says, breathy, "in kindergarten, at the park, at home… Footage of you on patrol..."

"May-"

"I'm just doing what needs to be done." Her goodbyes echo in his ears.

"What's your plan, May?"

She hesitates.

"Are you going to disappear? Is that it? You're moving again? Hoping Ivanov won't find you?" No, he reads that in her eyes, that's not _it_. That would never break the loop, that wouldn't keep Daisy out of danger, and she'd still be constantly watching her back for Ivanov's _Watchdogs_. No. Melinda May is not getting out of dodge this time, and she sure as hell is not going to go down without a fight. "It's a suicide mission..." he guesses.

She sighs, shaking her head. "My plan is to survive," she argues "but, in case it goes south..."

"You are _here to say goodbye_ ," he concludes for her in a whisper.

After that, everything happens so fast he doesn't really have time to catch his breath.

* * *

They hear the glass breaking as the power goes out. It's only a second before she's pushing him out of the way and throwing a kitchen knife at a shadow he hadn't even sensed. It hits mark in the intruder's right arm and his weapon drops to the floor with a metallic thud. In one single motion Melinda May grabs the stool she was sitting on and knocks the man down before even a _yelp_ gets past his lips.

Phil furrows his brow, his brain still trying to catch up with reality.

Something Melinda May doesn't seem to need as much, she has it all figured out: "Daisy," she breathes, her broken ribs cutting the air in her lungs.

And Phil Coulson steps out of his shock to leap over the unconscious body bleeding out on his kitchen's floor and run down the hall, to his daughter's room.

He's not halfway to her door that a punch to the stomach folds him to the ground. But _Daisy_ , is all he can think.

He doesn't know from where and how many men slipped into his house _just like that_ , but the irrational panic rising at knowing his daughter is in imminent danger bounces him right back on his feet at the click of a cocked gun.

 _Daisy_... He sucks his breath in, lets instinct take over, and concentrates on shapes and solid flesh and bones and the heat of a living punching bag in the dark.

 _Daisy_. He can just see her door a few steps ahead, slightly ajar. (It shouldn't be, it wasn't open when he left her asleep earlier…)

The man is taller than him, probably professionally trained, and strong. Phil lands a punch to his jaw and he merely grunts, but doesn't let go of the gun.

And pulls the trigger.

It's in that hot flash of light that (beside his whole life) Phil sees Melinda May's cat like shadow sliding past them down the hall. _A goddam ninja_ , his brain supplies, still stunned. Then the bullet lodges itself somewhere in his leather couch and a swing hits him square in the lower back.

With the gunfire still ringing in his ears and a sharp crippling white pain bringing him to his knees, Phil Coulson resolves to burying punches in his attacker's guts without really aiming. Hitting, just hitting and being hit in return, over and over, till he can barely breathe.

 _If he's fighting me he's not getting to Daisy_ , he vaguely plans. His face is probably a mask of blood when he can finally turn around and use the man's arm and push to pull him above his shoulder, landing him on his back at his feet, his boot on his chest (on what feels like a bulletproof vest), and finally gets a hold of the gun to knock him unconscious. They came prepared for a gunfight, he notes (and found hand to hand combat).

 _Daisy_. He straightens up and doesn't quite register Melinda May ducking under a third man's punch right next to him, he skirts just in time, surprised when her kick sends him piling up on his own opponent against the wall. Score.

Then the floorboard creaks and they both know someone else is in Daisy's room.

Melinda runs in first, he follows, and for half a second there everyone stands still. Melinda, the fourth man on the other side of Daisy's bed, and Phil, still on the threshold.

Because the little girl is awake, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

It's short lived: there's the hiss of a switchblade and Melinda May flying over the bed (with only two fingers on the covers) to kick the knife off the man's hand. It hits the wall and slides down while Phil lunges at him.

He grabs him at the waist, throws him off balance, and for a while they struggle to get the upper hand, thrashing and hitting uncoordinatedly, rolling on the floor beside the bed to grab at the blade that slipped underneath. And in the back of his mind he is aware of something else happening in the room but the adrenaline rush (or maybe the well delivered headbutt he just got) is making his ears ring and his vision blurry.

He finally gets to render the thug unconscious by grabbing him by the hair and hitting his head to the floor repeatedly till he goes limp.

He gets to his feet a little unsteady, clearing his eyesight first to his daughter, now fully awake and standing on her bed wide eyed, and then to what she's all caught up in: the fight between the tiny shadow of a woman and one of the guys they'd left for dealt with in the hall.

And that's how Phil Coulson really gets to see what he could only glimpse at by the feeble street light spilling in from the slit in the curtains.

Melinda May disposes of her body like a ballerina, her hair flying around her shoulders with every sharp and perfect movement, every punch or kick or side step packed with an energy that keeps her balanced and controlled (in spite of her injuries), it's beautiful to watch and frightening altogether. She seems to move faster than her opponent, anticipating his moves and retaliating in the same step. She blocks a blow, ducks, uses the man's knee to climb on top of him and roll him to the floor while breaking his arm behind his back with a very chilling _pop._ That sends shivers down Phil's spine (and he's either terrified or he just fell a little bit in love, he can't be sure yet).

She gets to her feet breathing heavily and finally kicks the whining man unconscious.

Daisy makes little jumps on the bed throwing her hands up. "Yes!" she cheers with a comical, lasting, whistling _S_ , and Phil Coulson finds himself huffing a laugh.

"We have to go," Melinda hisses, somewhat painfully. She has a split lip she didn't have before, Phil Coulson notices, his jaw dangerously slack in awe.

"There are four knocked down, unidentified, _probably_ Russian mafia associated men in the house... Who just tried to kidnap my daughter... And maybe _kill_ us," he unnecessarily points out, watching with growing concern as she busies herself around the room grabbing a few of Daisy's clothes from the chest drawer and shoving them into a _Frozen_ themed small backpack. When she moves to pick Daisy up from her bed he cuts in front of her, lifts his toddler in his arms and sternly adds: "I need to call downtown, arrest them, inter-"

"I know this one," she interrupts him hitting the leg of the guy he fought last with the tip of her boot, "He was there, watching while I was being tortured, I nailed his _friend_ 's foot to the floor to escape. I'll tell you everything," she promises "but right now we have to get _the hell_ out of here."

Daisy looks from one to the other, waiting for his reaction (maybe just to the explicit language like he usually does, or the general _very unusual_ commotion), any trace of sleep promptly vanished. He can only hope she didn't catch the apprehension behind his words or the spite and the ill concealed fear in Melinda's voice.

He calls Maria Hill from the car as Melinda drives and Daisy nervously swings her legs on the child seat behind him. They painfully need a plan.

* * *

He doesn't like this plan. Even if it's _his_ plan. He's surprised Fury is rolling with it. Even more astonished Maria is on board.

He's very _not_ shocked Melinda May doesn't like any of it and it feels almost like a consolation. In all honesty, it feels like they're a team. They've probably been on the same page ever since the whole portrait mishap, maybe even before that, and the thought is soothing his nerves.

"So, just to be clear, we're doing this for _the nanny_?"

John Garrett, on the other hand, is an idiot. There's no other way to put it. A good cop, surely, but right now Phil Coulson cannot, in good conscience, pretend he likes the man.

Still, Fury didn't have many options on such short notice so they'll have to make do. And he's probably going to work better than most, with the amount of self confidence and brassy attitude he can bring about on any given day. If he knows John Garrett (and he's known John Garrett for a long time) he won't let the poor man get a word in to interrupt his never ending monologue about that time he did _this_ or _that_. He'll be perfect to stall the FBI.

"We're doing this because it's the right thing to do," counters Nick Fury with all the patience he's left with. Opposite him, on the ragged up sofa where he's cleaning up their disassembled firearms, Phil grimaces. They are really doing this for _the nanny_. But he can't make the difference anymore.

"Ok, sure, I get everything, I mean..." stammers the idiot with his thick accent, blabbering on as he works on his own gear.

A chilly October dawn is lighting up the sky, but it's still dark in Fury's basement that they work with the lamp on. Phil's head throbs behind his eyes, his nose is probably broken and he's needed a stitch to close the cut on his brow from his boss' very not sensible nursing skills. But all things considered he's in good shape. For now. He'll have time to be sore and catch his breath later.

Maybe. Maybe not.

At least Daisy is safe, upstairs. The last time he checked, his daughter was nestled against Melinda May's side on the guest room's bed, one leg carelessly thrown across her middle and one little fist holding the sleeping woman's shirt.

They spent the night plotting, patching up off record informations from the four intruders in his house Maria Hill and John Garrett apprehended, and mixing them with what Melinda May had to tell.

The more he thinks about the hollow deepness in Melinda's eyes as she told him about Eva and Katya Belyakov or Ivanov's _Book of Sins_ , the guiltier he feels. The more he discovers about what really happened in those five days she went missing (or the year before in Arizona), the less inclined he is to let _justice_ in the hands of someone else. He can't forget the tiny Asian woman his daughter adores has gone to hell and back (she has the wounds to prove it, even if she's a _beautiful badass iron fist ninja warrior_ ), nor he can forgive.

Nick Fury lifts his only remaining eye on Phil, pointedly. "I ain't said _lawful_ thing, I said _right_." Sometimes Phil thinks losing the eye made him psychic or _something,_ which is probably why he's the boss, anyway.

"Yeah," Phil snorts "It's just… I feel bad about involving all of you in this, we're police officers, not vigilantes... We should- I just didn't know who to- I didn't want to-" he stutters, the right words eluding him once again.

"You don't want the mother of your child to get killed," offers Fury. "We get it."

Or bear the burden of crossing off Ivanov and his people, or going against the FBI on her own, he mentally adds (not that she'd confessed _that_ to the police, but he figured). Instead _She's not really Daisy's mother_ is what Phil decides to pinpoint, feeling the blush spread up his neck almost instantly.

Nick Fury has been his friend for decades before being his boss, he's known Daisy since he got her into his house, he knows exactly how things are. But he's heard the little girl talk about Melinda May as _Mom_ once and he's taken it at face value. "Like you're not _really_ Daisy's father, does it change anything?"

Phil just sighs, Melinda's out of the blue whispered question hanging in the back of his mind. _Have you ever thought about what you'd do if Daisy's parents showed up and reclaimed her at some point?_ He hadn't. His world has never been shaken as much as tonight and he's not sure where the random thought came to her either, earlier, eyes dark and closed off just before slipping into the guest room for some rest. He had to answer something: _One horror scenario at a time, ok_. Thus confirming her they both felt this nightmare had no end.

Phil just sighs. _This is not your war_ , she said when he asked her to rest a bit.

But they kidnapped her, tried to abduct his daughter and kill them, so he is making it his, even if only to alleviate a bit of her burden.

Besides, she's the only one he trusts with Daisy's safety after tonight. His daughter, in her quest for a mother, unintentionally also found herself the best _bodyguard_.

Maria Hill arrives with breakfast and a manila folder soon after. "Vic made a fuss, but she's got us hooked. Here's everything," she says unloading the folder among now empty styrofoam cups on the coffee table and getting comfortable beside Phil on the sofa with a donut.

"Sweet," comments Fury shuffling the papers toward Garrett. "Get to know the man," he orders.

John Garrett snickers from his corner. "So… we're really doing this."

 _This_ , is illegal, dangerous, and nothing sworn police officers should be trying anyway. But they are definitely doing it.

"Can't keep the FBI waiting."

They have a plan (it stands on a gamble but it's quite a solid one).

And Phil should know by now that nothing _ever_ goes according to plan.


	3. Phil

Eva Belyakov, with her blonde hair and angelic features, was hardly the innocent soul she presented herself as. At twenty seven she managed money laundering for three of Ivanov's companies, at thirty five she was in charge of all of his West Coast business. Her only weakness was Katya, her manipulative twelve year old daughter.

But all of this Melinda May only knew afterwards, months after FBI Special Agent Grant Ward informed her of their deaths. And for over a year Melinda May had grieved and beaten herself up, convinced the murder of a little girl and her mother caught in a bad situation were ultimately her fault. As was her own fault the loss of her husband, collateral damage in a fight she had been brought in to serve as witness, to corroborate whatever plan Katya had cooked up.

It was only four days before her own death that she had all the pieces to put the puzzle together, while hanging from the ceiling of a small private airport hangar in the middle of the Arizona desert being electrocuted and cut by Ivanov's _Watchdogs_ for informations she didn't have.

The Russian, who ill tolerated spoiled children, had a boarding school programmed for the kid's future, which didn't agree with Katya. The girl convinced her mother the _Bratva_ wanted to kill her, eventually, and Eva set it all up (the bruises, the tears, the escape in the night) to seek an immunity deal with the FBI in exchange of Ivanov's _Book of Sins_ : a ledger of his business contacts and movements.

The book for which Eva had been killed never got to the FBI table negotiation, but someone had leaked to Ivanov's men the safe house in which to find mother and daughter, and then, three months before her own kidnapping, someone had started a blackmailing game using informations from that ledger.

When Phil Coulson confirmed Special Agent Grant Ward was sent to find her upon her abduction, Melinda May had her suspicions validated.

And a plan.

But since nothing _ever_ goes according to plan (hers or Phil's) she wakes up with a start, gasping for air, coughing against her dry throat and fighting off the hands that try to keep her down.

"Coulson," she rasps, "he got sho- he got-"

"Welcome back, Miss May, take it easy, easy..." mutters some lanky blue eyed man with a thick Scottish accent towering over her.

"What happened?"

The man helps her to a sitting position once he understands she will not be yieldingly restrained and hands her a plastic glass with water, then rests half leaning into the stretcher she was lying on, his hands clasped in front of him in a relaxed stance. "I'm Doctor Radcliffe and you're safe, you're at the morgue now, don't worry."

Melinda May blinks twice, taking in the sight of a steel table top in the middle of the room and an hive of cells occupying an entire wall as she greedily sips her water, the feeling of safety eluding her completely.

"Coulson?" she asks again more coherently. Her heartbeat is in her ears, her vision is blurred and the last thing she remembers is Maria Hill's serious expression as she tells her _I'm sorry, it's the only way_.

Even the air in her mouth tastes like death.

Melinda May is dead.

* * *

 **Interlude VI**

Aunt Maria is usually very funny, she sneaks her candies before dinner and pulls faces to make her laugh. Daisy doesn't know what to make of her stony look as they sit together on a row of plastic chairs at the hospital.

Perhaps, Daisy thinks, it's about the monsters haunting Melinda May. She still smelled like lily of the valley and home last night when Daisy swore to protect her and hugged her tight.

Daisy wishes she could conjure up that comforting feeling now (maybe she could, if only her father were there) because she has never felt more forlorn.

* * *

 **VII**

It's not her phone number they call from the hospital to notify the next of kin. It's Rosalind Price.

Melinda May peers from the crack in the door as Maria Hill tells her what Nick Fury delivered a few minutes ago: Phil Coulson was a donor.

 _I will not let his sacrifice go wasted_ , he said, _Because he was shot we now have an opportunity to rightfully investigate Agent Ward and we will dig it all up. I promise_.

Her hair and clothes are still dusty and stained from the improvised crime scene Fury had John Garrett set up at the last minute (a task he was creepily eager to complete when he half buried her in the dirt and took pictures. _I knew you'd follow him to the grave_ , he sneered). It felt all too real. The cold, the dread, the lead weight in her stomach... the dry patch of blood on Maria Hill's jacket she tried to hide in front of Daisy. It felt like a shot through the heart.

"Agent Hand will be here soon with your new documents, a change of clothes and some cash," Fury adds, perched on the stool by the empty bed. "You have a bus leaving for New York City in the morning, drop wherever you want. No one will know."

Through the door she sees Rosalind Price's face politely crumple behind her hand.

Melinda feels sick. She's not sure what cocktail Dr Radcliffe injected her with in order to credibly flatline her for the bystanders, but it's still making her head spin and her stomach churn. She manages only a few words: "What about Daisy?"

She did this. She ruined their perfectly happy lives because she selfishly wanted to play at being a mother (she should have known that dream died a long time ago). And now Phil Coulson was wired to life sustaining machines in the room across the corridor, Rosalind Price was saying her last goodbyes, and Daisy…

"We'll take care of her," says Maria Hill entering the room and catching her question, "We'll find her a new home, a suitable family," she adds.

"Maybe I could," suggests Melinda turning around abruptly, remembering at the last moment to try not to sound too desperate. She's not even sure she got the words out though, her throat is clogged.

But the other woman cuts her off: "Absolutely not."

Fury's expression doesn't change and his only eye rests trained on her, inspecting her unkempt appearance, battered tiny frame, and the resolute line of her lips. "She already calls her _Mom_ ," he comments like he's talking to himself.

She did this, she thinks, she was starting to believe she could be loved again but she doesn't deserve it, she doesn't deserve that happiness.

 _Sir, we can't make the child disappear!_

 _This has already gone too far._

 _Exactly._

 _What difference does it make at this point?_

To still the chaos Melinda tunes the world down, focuses on her heartbeat and the faint beeping of the machines in the room across the corridor.

 _It's too dangerous! She will go through the system. It's what's best for her._

 _Coulson wouldn't want her to be with strangers._

 _Coulson is dead!_

This breaks her bubble and she realizes her eyes are full of tears she won't let fall.

"I have an idea," finally admits Fury "I know what his doctors said but Radcliffe made a few phone calls... It needs to stay between the three of us, and if it works... The child should be with her." He points at Melinda May. "And even if it doesn't, Coulson would want _that_."

There is no argument after that, just a scowl, resignation, Melinda May's unreadable expression and jumbled emotions none of them can properly name.

* * *

Pittsburgh was not on the road, but they had to transfer at Cleveland Station and there was a dinosaur on a leaflet on one of the travel agency stands that caught Daisy's attention.

One glance at how miserable the toddler looked after two days on a bus and she knew that was going to be it.

She finds a room with a queen size bed, a sink and a stove, toilet down the hall, and the landlady (sixty seven year old Mrs Lian Kwan, who lives in the ground floor rooms and only speaks Chinese) looks after Daisy when she's not in kindergarten while she teaches classes at a local gym by day and waits tables at a Chinese restaurant by night.

After three weeks Daisy bristles and has a cranky meltdown before she can leave for her evening shift: "Don't go!" she pleads clinging to her legs and looking up at her with red cheeks, a snotty nose and the same bright eyes behind a thick fringe like the first day she met her at the farmer's market.

She thins her lips, thinking not for the first time that this child deserves better than an emotionally detached surrogate mother. But for now this is all she can offer. She quits the evening job, shifts some hours at the gym and Mrs. Kwan's son in law finds her a morning part time in the administration of the local post office where he works.

Every week she calls from a burner phone a secured voicemail service number Fury gave her, hoping for a message, but two months later she still has no news. What little money Maria Hill sneaked her from the sale of his red door cottage, and the bottle of Haig they _borrowed_ for a _victory_ toast at Fury's, sit (in a safe deposit box and a shelf, respectively) untouched. She's not even sure why she clung to its idea as much as to take that bottle with her... and save it for that time that's not coming.

She balances her life on a wire, her heartbeat keeping the rhythm of a distant beeping machine echoing in a coma treatment center outside Detroit and the Chinese lullaby she hums for Daisy every night.

Her name is Jiaying Johnson and her whole life is a lie.

* * *

"He's… sleeping?" asks Daisy on her toes trying to peek up the mattress that is as high as her eye level.

Melinda May picks her up and sits her on the hospital bed at her father's feet. She nods. "We can't wake him up, he needs to rest," she warns.

"Because of the bad people that hurt him?"

Melinda nods again.

It's been two months since the shooting at Agent Ward's motel, two months since the Russian mafia showed up as the FBI Special Agent was returning, Garrett in tow still trying to stray him. Two months since Phil Coulson deliberately ran in the midst of gunfire to prevent the _Watchdogs_ to get to that stupid book in Ward's possession. It's almost Christmas and it's been two months since they are _both_ officially dead.

"Can't he come sleep at home?"

Daisy has been very good so far, only asking about her father every now and then, putting on a brave face and pretending to believe Melinda's _magical place_ white lies. But when she asked about what to write in her letter to Santa the little girl had a mini meltdown thinking there would be no presents. _Dad told me he don't exist and he buys all the Christmas presents but it's a secret, I can't tell anyone_ , she finally sniffled. Melinda blinked, taken aback. _I will- I will get you what you want,_ she promised. But instead of something _Frozen_ related like she expected Daisy wanted her father back.

And a trip to that hospital just outside Detroit was as close as she could provide.

"The doctors need to check on him every day," she tells her.

She's debated quite some time before deciding it might not be a totally traumatising experience for a four year old to see him like this. There are wires and tubes hooked at his arms and chest (somewhat hidden under the blanket) and a feeding line through his nose. But Daisy (unlike Melinda) doesn't seem particularly shocked by the sight of her usually lively, spontaneous and affectionate father lying unresponsive in a hospital bed that doesn't look _magical_ at all.

The little girl stares for a while, head tilted on the side, then she curls up at his feet like a small kitten and starts chitchatting like he would answer. It shouldn't be a surprise after all, Daisy was never fazed from the beginning by her lack of expressive response either. She seemed to read people's characters and feelings on a deeper level (and Melinda chose to trust her judgment on a leap of faith all those months ago: if Daisy liked her, _maybe_ she wasn't yet to waste after all).

So right now Melinda May observes Phil Coulson's pale, greying skin, wrinkling like tissue paper, his sensibly longer thinning hair, his chest tired rise and fall, and hears herself whisper: _You're not allowed to be gone_. _Not yet._ And to his credit he doesn't prove her wrong.

They stay the whole afternoon, the aching in her chest gradually numbed by the machines beeping closer, and before they leave Daisy has three drawings up on the wall at his right, and a fourth she finishes just in time to tape at the foot of the bed. It's a jumble of circles and diamond shapes connected by lines she proudly declares to be a map. "So he can come and find us when he wakes up."

Melinda May holds his little girl up above the jungle of wires for a flying goodbye cheek kiss, but can't muster up the courage to lean down and do the same.

It's another month before she gets a phone call in the middle of a sparring session and she has to hide in the toilet with tears of relief eventually spilling despite her every effort.

* * *

 **Interlude VII**

 _Boom boom boom_.

Daisy thinks her heart is going to burst out of her chest when she finally spots her father in the crowd at the station. She runs and in seconds she's up in the air, hanging from his neck and giggling because Phil Coulson is blowing raspberries on her cheeks and she's so happy!

She almost doesn't notice his eyes are a little bit sadder and his left arm a little bit stiffer. Almost.

Because, mostly, she is mesmerized by the ghost of a melancholic _happiness_ on her mother's face when she steps closer to hug him, too.

* * *

 **VIII**

"I can't believe Fury did this to me." Phil Coulson shakes his head, a look of deep disappointment clouding his face. "Do I look like a _Calvin_ to you?" he asks feigning outrage holding up his new (fake) ID.

Melinda merely purses her lips never taking her eyes from the road. "It's not that bad... _Cal_ ," she mocks.

He scoffs. "I can't even correctly pronounce your name." And he tries, a few times, but _Jiaying_ is never quite right, even Daisy giggles, revising his butchered Chinese twang from the back seat of the car. "Can I call you May?" he surrenders.

 _Or Melinda_ , she wishes. "Please, _Phil_."

They stop in front of another _open house_ sign, the third that Sunday, in a quiet neighborhood north-west downtown with lines of brick fronts and bowindows climbing up the hill. Daisy loves the red front door, obviously, even if the color is chipped around the keyhole.

Inside it's quite old, the walls need fresh paint, five (out of twelve) steps of the stairs to the upper floor squeaks, and the garden fence requires some serious work. Which is probably why they could afford it, with their combined income and the sum in the safe deposit box. But the hardwood floors are still good, the living room has a working fireplace and there's a veranda in the back that seems like a perfect space for tai chi routines.

Nonetheless Melinda looks morosely at the clawfoot bathtub and the double sink in the master bedroom's bathroom, thinking that Rosalind Price would have loved it, too.

Phil Coulson is probably about to make a silly remark about the sixties pea green tiles, but he catches her eyes in the mirror and she thinks he can read her mind because his shoulders sag. Just a little.

"I'm sorry. You had a whole different life planned," Melinda offers meekly. _And I stole it_.

"It doesn't matter."

It still feels _wrong_. She looks around a bit lost for words. But he doesn't say anything and she's pressed to fill this unnatural silence. "It was a slim chance you would survive surgery, and recover..." she says, " _They_ had to believe you were dead, we had to tell _her_ too..." They wouldn't even elbow each other were they to brush teeth at the same time with the double sink, her brain supplies at the worst moment _ever_. She blinks, hoping not to blush.

He stares back through the mirror, an odd sort of calm look she can't read and her throat closes. She wouldn't be using this bathroom, she amends, there's another one downstairs and a guest room for her down the hall.

"It's ok," he says at last. "I'm grateful, by the way: I'm still alive, and you and Daisy are safe and sound, that's all that matters. Rosalind…" He hangs his head then, and exhales, probably to mask how much it really pains him to think about her. "She'll be ok. She doesn't need me to pop up like a ghost when she thought me gone for months… And for what, anyway? Phil Coulson is _dead_. There can never be a future there."

Then Daisy runs in babbling about a swing in the backyard and tries to drag him downstairs again.

"Somehow I always knew it would end like that," he adds smiling ruefully at Melinda like he means it.

His name is Calvin Johnson and fake papers say they are actually, truly, married.

* * *

She must have dozed off with the tv on because she wakes up with a start when Daisy comes in running straight to her: "Mom! I picked flowers for you at the park! Look!" She waves a bunch of scrawny looking daisies under her nose and she's almost grateful her clogged sinuses don't register the foul smell of it.

"Thank you," she says nonetheless, both amused and touched, sitting up straighter on the edge of the bed.

Coulson is right behind his daughter, picking up and shoving to the side her discarded muddy shoes before sitting next to her. "Why don't you go downstairs and ask Mrs Kwan for a vase and water for the flowers, Daisy," he prompts gently.

Daisy nods enthusiastically and runs out again, oblivious of Nick Fury's close up on national tv explaining how their small hometown police force was able to discover, dig up and bring to justice a whole Russian mafia gang, and unveil the involvement of a crooked FBI agent in at least two murder cases that were going to trial that very same week.

 _Sometimes you're wounded, sometimes you wound_ , she thinks pursing her lips. She's feeling his eyes on her. She must look awful after two days of runny nose, headaches, croaky throat, little sleep and irritated, bloodshot eyes. She doesn't want to think about the state of her hair...

"You look a little bit more yourself," he teases.

"I feel cranky."

"Like I said..." he deadpans.

On the screen in front of them Fury is shaking hands with the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a bunch of other people in tailored suits.

"Should be you up there," she says.

Daisy runs back in, dropping a glass of water with limpy flowers in her hands to settle on her father's knees.

"Nah," Phil Coulson answers changing the channel to cartoons "I'm right where I belong."

He's been living for three weeks now in a house with exposed pipes running on the corridor ceiling and a little altar with joss sticks on top of the stairs, sleeping in a small room next to hers with a fan in the corner and a rice cooker he doesn't know how to use, and every day he nods along politely to Mrs Kwan's incomprehensible (for him) chattering; so, really, he couldn't be more out of place than that, she thinks. (This is _her_ world, the background she fell back to when she had nothing else to build upon but her own character. She feels a little guilty for that, too).

But it's stated with such fondness that she wants to believe him.

It all makes more sense when he distractedly adjusts Daisy's sweatshirt that has ridden up her back and shares a smile with her.

And then it shifts to confusion. She's been caught staring again (she shouldn't, she chides herself).

"Did I say something wrong?" he simply asks.

He doesn't look like a complicated man, which is why underestimating him is quite possibly the worst mistake. "No, I was just thinking… about the house."

"The one with the red door?" suggests Daisy.

"That's the one we liked best, yeah?"

Melinda nods.

"What about it?"

"Even with down payment it's a twenty years financial plan." She straightens her daisies' petals between fingers. "It's a long time to be stuck together."

It's a very unsubtle way to offer him a way out, were he so inclined, and she has to force herself to meet his eyes for a reply, and if they are wet she'll blame the stupid cold.

"Oh," he says. _Oh_ , is not enough syllables to interpret and she feels a little bubble of panic rising in her chest. "I see," he continues nodding to himself "You're right, I'm sorry I didn't think about it, I- I took advantage, took you for granted," he stammers a bit looking at his hands. _Oh_ , echoes in her mind, _oh no_ … "We can figure something out, if it's not what you want-"

"Maybe I do," she blurts out before he can get further into the _completely wrong_ idea she's not up to play house (which is just another set up for heartbreak, anyway, but she's getting used to dive right into it, isn't she).

"Ok..." he replies carefully, "Maybe I do, too."

"Good."

And neither can make eye contact again after that. Daisy awkwardly chews on her bottom lip, unsure of what just happened.

"Tell you what, when you feel better we crack that bottle of Haig, deal?"

Melinda May pretends her heart is not making leaps in her chest. "Deal," she simply says back.

* * *

When that _friendly_ bullet carved a hole in his chest at an angle, surprisingly, the most damage it made was not to his heart. It was indeed a miracle Phil Coulson was still alive of course, but while every effort was made to piece his heart back together, nothing could be done for the ripped string of nerves in his left shoulder. After surgery (and a month of therapy following his awakening) he retains a certain amount of control over his arm but no sensitivity whatsoever.

He still has troubles with holding things at times, his muscles are stiff and slow and he doesn't feel any pain; in short, his own arm feels alien to him.

It gets better after a while. On his way home from the school he's started teaching history classes at he stops at her gym almost every day, working with a physiotherapist (and sometimes sparring with her) before leaving together.

Melinda notices he still prefers his right hand whenever he has to touch Daisy though, and he often has little bruises here and there on his left because he isn't fully aware of its position in space at all times. He doesn't seem to trust himself as before, which pains her. He lets her drive, and she's officially in charge of knotting his ties (Melinda enjoys the little ritual too much not to pretend she doesn't know he's been practicing and making progresses, or to confess he still looks better without it).

"Ooops," says Daisy when he mishandles a glass and it shatters on the floor of their new kitchen on the first night they move in.

Melinda can't get the broom from the closet beyond the stairs quick enough that he's picking up shards on his own and ends up with a cut across his palm.

"It's nothing, it's a graze," he insists. "It doesn't even hurt." Which earns him a dark look.

He tries to grin back and make it pass as a bad joke but (not for the first time) she has the feeling the restrictions of his new condition must affect him more than he wants to let on.

He's not used to being… clumsy. He's still an efficient police officer at his core, always prepared to take action rather than sit back and command.

And most of all he's not used to be _coddled_. She stills, realizing then and there all her efforts at assisting him have been making him uncomfortable. She makes a note to herself to be less intrusive and more supportive when he'll let her from now on.

She limits herself at sweeping up the glass as he cleans up his wound and Daisy helps him wrap gauze around his hand.

Still, one hour later when they crack open that bottle by the fire in the living room, he's not the one pouring the Scotch in two tumblers, it's Melinda May.

"I feel different," he confesses after the first refill. "It's not just the hand, it's... It's me."

"Maybe you're not supposed to get over it. Some things you can't move past; they scar you, change you permanently."

He hums, looking back at her like he knows she's talking from her own very personal experience. It's thrilling to know he can read her so easily by now, scary but welcomed too.

And maybe it's the firelight dancing in his eyes, or maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe it's her wishful thinking that makes her reach out and brush his bandaged palm. He doesn't feel it, anyway, she tells herself.

"You died," she whispers (but the voice in her head is still screaming _you were dead, you were dead because I wasn't there to protect you_ ). "There's no way you went through a trauma like this and not come out of it changed. You feel different, because you are different."

They both are, in the end, he joined her club. And that's probably what she blames herself the most for.

He doesn't say anything for a long time, just sips the rest of his Haig staring at the fire. It's only when she looks down that she realizes he's curled his fingers around hers in turn, and when he does finally speak, it prickles on her skin. "I don't know if I've said it enough but… I'm glad you're here," he says quietly. "I'm glad it's you."

For the first time in forever she can't help the corner of her lips to lift up in the faintest of smiles, and maybe this warm feeling in her chest has nothing to do with the fire, or the Haig.

* * *

 **Interlude VIII**

Daisy's favourite part of the day is the early morning, when she gets to train with Melinda May. _Hold it_ , she instructs her as she lifts her up in the air like an airplane and down again till their noses bump and she giggles.

Sometimes Daisy catches her father sleepy smile when he gets down for breakfast and stops by the stairs to watch them. Then she sticks out her tongue to lick Melinda's nose and earn a retaliating kiss, just to see it widen (and for the kisses, obviously, they only happen if she thinks no one is watching).

* * *

 **IX**

She's not sure how it happened, but by the end of spring Melinda May has a bunch of ducklings, ranging from four year olds to first graders, tagging along her daily tai chi routine.

Maybe Daisy spread the word at kindergarten or maybe letting them watch _Power Rangers_ at Joey Gutierrez's birthday party was a _bad_ idea, but she talked the gym manager into letting her start a junior after school wushu class and it's thriving.

Daisy, obviously, is the little leader of her five kids team, even if bossing around Robbie Reyes is hard (he's two years older and pretty stubborn), but even if tiny she's already ahead of them.

One day Daisy saw her sparring with Phil after his therapy at the gym and, thinking they were actually fighting, ran in between them, yelling at her to stop hurting him, and tried to defend her father throwing adorably uncoordinated punches at her.

Phil Coulson reassured her they were just playing, but Melinda May seized the opportunity to actually show her how to hold her fists in a fight: _Keep your thumb tucked in, never inside or you'll hurt yourself, elbows down, wrist should be straight, and you hit with the flat of your fingers, ok? Hit my hand. Again. Again. Again_ …

And Daisy learned quickly, all worries forgotten. (What she can't forget is the look of amazement in Phil Coulson's eyes that day). Daisy likes playing the extra weight on her back when she does push ups, or balancing herself on her hands when she lifts her, it's _fun_. She's a natural, and Melinda knew since she took her ice skating that winter that she had good equilibrium to be a great ballerina or (with proper training) an even better fighter.

Still, she wonders where she went wrong when Daisy scampers in the kitchen one Sunday afternoon sporting a sulky frown and asking: "Mom, am I pretty?"

Melinda pauses the vegetable chopping to look at her deadly serious: "Very."

Daisy just snorts: "I knew it."

From the living room Phil Coulson bursts into laughters and abandons his newspaper reading to join her in the kitchen as Daisy runs out again satisfied with herself. She throws him a look that speaks for itself and he shrugs still amused. "Self confidence is important," he points out.

"This has everything to do with the Campbell kid, I'm telling you," she scowls "She's out there breaking hearts and she's not even five, Phil, watch it."

He laughs again, and she discreetly cherishes the sound of it. He sits with her and even if their knees brush she doesn't flinch away. She's getting accustomed to the heat of his skin and the feel of his body against hers since they spar at the gym (to build his strength up again). Another wall that dangerously crumbles.

"I'm serious, though," he says "you're doing wonders with Daisy, she even speaks Chinese now."

"Just the children songs."

"It's more than I could ever teach her," he retorts. "She's growing to be a positive, smart, and fearless girl. And I wouldn't think too much about boys, by the time she's of dating age she'll kick disrespecting asses twice her size, just like you... I'll never have to worry!" he teases with that grin that makes her want to kiss him. She ducks her head instead and chops zucchinis faster. "You don't do well with praise, do you?" he comments still watching her.

She sighs. There's nothing to be praised about, she thinks, she's bad news wherever she goes: she put Daisy's life at risk and he's living on borrowed time, a life of lies, all because of her… "Phil-"

"You did good, Melinda," he says, her name so softly spoken it sounds different, almost endearing.

She feels tears prickling her eyes because she never wants to have a conversation but this one can't be avoided anymore. "I couldn't protect you," she whispers ashamed.

"You can't blame yourself for the choices _I_ made, you were a victim in this as much as we were."

"I'm not a victim," she snaps.

"Yes!" he counters, raised eyebrows, "You absolutely were. But you are stronger than them and you beat them, _we_ beat them, _together_."

Every muscle in her body is tense, quivering in the effort it takes her to breathe while staring back at his earnest blue eyes.

"I know you won't believe me just yet, I guess it's gonna be a leap of faith kinda thing."

"It's not that simple for me."

He smiles shyly and she feels herself free falling. "Yes, yes it is. Just follow my lead."

* * *

Phil Coulson is a people person. Death didn't change that about him.

What Melinda May can see changing gradually is the approach he has to people now. He was always a confident guy, but he was never in charge of things. He was the heart (and the arm for extension) to Fury's commanding presence.

Now that both his heart and arm suffered some damage, he's learning to be the _head_. He's delegating more, which suits her just fine (she still gets to knot his ties in the morning).

What he is not relinquishing is the barbecue. Which leaves Melinda May (a known non people person) alone to deal with the rest of the neighbours littering their backyard.

Daisy on her part is having the time of her life pretending to lead her team of intrepid _mini Power Rangers_ on interstellar missions around the white oak tree.

Melinda finally excuses herself from the most boring conversation she's ever pretended to enjoy to join him by the grill. "My face hurts," she mutters with her fake smile still on.

He chuckles. "You know, you're scaring Daisy when you laugh."

She scoffs, checking the group of children on the other side of the yard to spot her swinging ponytail and red cheeks.

"It's almost over, and we won't be doing another one till next summer," he promises.

"If I don't murder someone first..."

"Really? No one you find at least tolerable?" He flips ribs on the grill and steals a fry from her plate.

Melinda slides closer, conspiratorially: "Bobbi and Lance Hunter over there are ok, I guess, he's a bit foul mouthed but she keeps him PG around little kids. Not that they would understand a thing with that accent," she adds as an afterthought. "She's very perceptive, but discreet. The Mackenzies are nice people, too nice... almost boring," she comments truthfully, "their eldest seems to have taken Daisy as a little sister. Level headed, calming presence so… good. The Gutierrezes and the Rodriguezes seem happier to talk in Spanish between themselves but were friendly enough to switch to English when I was around. The Tripletts are three generations deep into the military..." she grimaces.

He hums his understanding. "We definitely want to avoid slipping covers around them."

She nods and grabs a bottle of unfinished beer he's abandoned nearby to take a swig before continuing: "And that single mom - who brought no kid by the way - Camilla, talking to them over there... had her eyes on your ass since she came in, she'd be the first to go."

He bursts into laughters and she almost blushes. Almost. "You'd be a great undercover agent, but I'd rather we don't murder anyone at our first barbecue, _darling_."

They agreed on pet names to prevent stuttering on their fake identities (because they are not spies on a mission, this is their life now) but it sounds odd to her ears.

"I'm trying my best, _honey_ ," she taunts back.

And in the end it doesn't seem that much of a hassle when she sees him chat with the guys about baseball or laughing, making friends, and playing with the kids on the grass. By the time they wave goodbye to the last of their guests Melinda May would pay big money for a pair of flats but she can see Phil Coulson has never felt more relaxed in weeks.

"That went well," he sighs contentedly slumping on the sofa. Daisy climbs on top of him to claim the remote, then settles on the armrest cushion to watch cartoons.

Melinda avoids taking a look at the amount of dirty dishes and glasses that still linger in their backyard and sits as gracefully as she can muster at his side. She's not even surprised when his arm comes around her shoulders and she lets herself scoot closer to rest her head on him, like Jiaying Johnson would have.

Pretending to be happily married has come unpredictably easy for the both of them the whole afternoon, locking eyes from time to time, his hand at the small of her back, the light banter, the small touches, whispering in his ear, his fingertips brushing her hairline… Calvin Johnson loves Jiaying and they're good actors, she tells herself. She doesn't let her mind wonder if a part of it was as real as it seemed, that wouldn't do her any good. She does feel a bit guilty about enjoying it a little too much but she won't blame herself for this extra idling moment.

He smells nice.

And he looks happy.

She should stop staring at his lips but he's smiling that little thin lips smile of his and she's not sure where Calvin Johnson ends and Phil Coulson begins anymore because Jiaying Johnson definitely would kiss him right now...

But she's Melinda May. And she won't admit she's in love with him, not even to herself.

* * *

 **Interlude IX**

Daisy never really had a doubt. Melinda May is full of love, she can feel it… It's just that, for some reason, she doesn't really show it. You have to look for it. Daisy had to pry it out of her (one kiss and one curled corner of her lips at a time).

It's almost maddening how easier it is for Phil Coulson to elicit that wistful look in her eyes or the slow spreading smile full of fondness _now_ that she did all the work.

But she understands, she's completely in love with her father. Just like Melinda May.

* * *

 **X**

He rushes in with a background of flashes and distant thunders like in a horror movie, dripping wet and soaking the entrance floor.

"You're home," she greets him, surprised, from the cupboard under the stairs where she's looking for a candle.

"Yeah, I left early hoping _not_ to get drenched..." Melinda bites her lip not to giggle at his frustration but seeing his struggle with his jacket clinging to his shirt she throws a towel at him that lands on his head. He groans, then stills with one sleeve still on to ask: "Do I have to go get Daisy?"

Melinda circles the sofa to help him, getting a start on drying his hair. "No, I just called the Rodriguezes, she's having fun _indoor camping_ with Elena and Lincoln in their living room. She didn't wanna come home just yet."

"Oh."

"Yep."

"You're just happy a bunch of kids is muddying someone else's floor."

"Perhaps," she teases with a ghost of amusement, loosening his tie while he takes on the task of rubbing himself dry. "Look at the mess _one_ big boy just made," she says nodding at the wet patch under his feet.

He chuckles, she feels it through his ribcage as her hands slide down to unbutton his shirt.

She should have seen it coming, probably, with the summer thunderstorm and the power outage, but it was just a warm summer afternoon like many others before he stepped in, and she underestimated the electricity in the air. She can't believe she's falling right into it _now_ after all the closed calls...

It's his heartbeat under her fingertips at first, and she knows looking up at him is a mistake but she can't help it. Then she slips the shirt off his shoulders and lets her hands slide down his arms, feeling the goosebumps there. And he's suddenly very quiet, alive and solid in front of her, shyly smiling back with that boyish look and mussed hair.

 _Follow my lead_ , he said...

He doesn't say anything, she closes her eyes and hopes he'll catch her.

His lips are gentle on hers, sweet and wet, but his hands come up at her hips a second later contradicting them, firm and determined to keep her close. The tip of his nose nuzzles hers and then he kisses her again, and again as his fingers trade in her hair and she locks her arms around his neck. Next thing she knows her feet are off the ground.

She hears herself moan between thunders, cherishing the feel of his short hair under her palms, lightly scraping his scalp with her nails to deepen the kiss. He complies eagerly, swaying them gently further inside the house till the back of her legs hit the back of the sofa and she almost knocks a lamp off the adjacent table trying to keep upright.

They find themselves breathing heavily half collapsed on the sofa, his hands cradling her bottom as she hangs off his neck with a lamp in her other hand.

She... _titters_. She hasn't since ninth grade and would probably want to die of embarrassment if he wasn't also chuckling and holding her impossibly close (she finds she likes this unexpected possessiveness).

She stretches to steady the lamp back in place and he finds the time to pepper her exposed neck with feather like brushes of his lips in time with the rain hammering on the windows.

"Bed?" he suggests.

She nods and she thinks her heart will explode in her chest at the way he's looking at her when he lifts her again to stumble towards the stairs.

"I can walk." But still wraps her legs around him tighter to support part of her own weight.

"I can't take my hands off you."

She snorts, kisses his eyes and his brow, the corner of his mouth, the tip of his nose as they bump into walls and doors all the way up. She's out of her shirt the second he sets her down on the bed, but the clasp of her bra doesn't seem to yield as easily, and she worries it's his left hand not cooperating (or maybe it's her palming his length through his pants in the meantime).

Her shorts and panties join his briefs on the floor and their lips meet again as a lightning splits the sky (she would roll her eyes at the continuing cliché if she cared about anything else but the feel of him against her at this point). His skin is cool from the rain but the contact with hers tingles all of her senses and she can't help the sighs into his neck, eyes screwed shut, when his fingers find her ready.

He grunts something resembling her name and when she looks up at him he's failing to rip open a condom with his teeth. _Oh_! She ridiculously blushes.

Melinda takes over from him, steals the package, weaves his left hand in hers, kisses each insensitive fingertip, his palm, the curve of his stiff thumb, and follows his pulse to brush her lips at his wrist. She loves this man, she admits (if only to herself), a bubble of emotion threatening to burst in her belly at his pained expression.

"Melinda..." He can't feel it. But it doesn't matter, _it doesn't matter_! (She'll worship every inch of him even if he doesn't _feel_ it, until he will).

A light shove on his shoulder and she's straddling him, holding his gaze every time a lightning lits the room. She rips the condom open then, unfolding it on him, watching the frustration melt into barely contained restraint.

They find an easy rhythm against the rain, her hands on his chest, her fingers tracing the jagged lines of the bullet scar above his heart, as he's watching her with half lidded eyes and the face of a devotion she doesn't deserve. Still, he's not overly gentle (and she's grateful for all of his hard lines and shapes), she bites her lip to be quiet, to hear his breathy moans instead, she bends down from time to time to steal a kiss and better feel the ripples of her whispered name through his chest.

"I'm… close," he says. She lifts his hands from where they were grounding her hips to thread his fingers with hers then, moving them away from where he wanted to touch her, maybe bring her over the edge with him, because she wants to see it. He's beautiful when he comes a few moments later, thunders roaring in the distance.

He tugs on her hands and she shifts to kiss his throat. It triggers her own climax, unexpectedly, a motley of light flashing in the dark behind her eyelids that leaves her panting and shivering, sprawled on his chest.

She comes down from her high pressing her quivering lips to the scar above his heart, Phil's hand playing with her hair, combing her locks behind her ear and kissing her hairline as he tenderly rolls her off of him, murmuring soothing nothings that she confuses with the droplets hitting the window pane, the roof, the love clouding her eyes.

"Melinda?" She doesn't understand his furrowed brow till his thumb wipes gently at her cheek and comes off wet.

She's crying.

She's been crying. The realization leaves her a little shellshocked.

Phil props himself on his elbow and she feels a bubble of panic rise at her throat at the missing contact. "Are you ok?"

She nods, taking shaky breaths, placing both her palms on his chest to sync her heartbeat to his. _Steady_. Trying to stifle the overwhelming flow of emotions she didn't let herself feel for so long. _Steady_. Spilling all at once. _Steady_. Failing.

"Help me out, here, I'm a little out of depth I'm afraid," he says softly.

She sniffles. _Tell me about it_ , she comments to herself a little ashamed. "I'm sorry, I just-" She rests her forehead on his, exhausted, naming her feelings for the first time: "I didn't think I could be this _happy_."

Lightnings flash and thunders follow as his grin crinkles the corners of his eyes and he nips playfully at her cheeks to wash away the tears.

They trade touches and bashful smiles as they wind down, sighing into each other's warm skin.

"I was in a very _dark_ place when Daisy found me, that day at the farmer's market," she confesses, "I didn't think I could be loved again, didn't think I… _deserved_ to be happy."

Daisy has proved her wrong of course, before anyone else, a four year old abandoned child decided that Melinda May was worthy of all the love she had to give. And somehow, even after everything she's let him uncover about her, Phil Coulson too, agrees.

* * *

 **Interlude X**

Robbie Reyes is most definitely lying.

He tells everybody at school he's getting a brother for Christmas that (for now) lives inside his mother's belly... But everybody knows (as does Daisy) babies grow under cabbage leaves!

She was particularly upset when she asked, too, for a brother or sister for Christmas and her father chuckled that there was not enough time. Daisy is sure a trip to the market can't take that long. After all that's where she met her mother. Melinda May always tells her she was buying vegetables one day and that's how she found Daisy: under cabbage.

* * *

 **THE END**

 _AN: I was not expecting this story to go anywhere when I first set my fingers on the keyboard, it somehow got a bit away from me..._

 _Thank you so much for reading!_


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